Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese media franchise originally published as a seine (‘youth’) manga series of the same name written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow. There have been several different anime adaptations of Ghost in the Shell, starting with the 1995 film of the same name, telling the story of Section 9’s investigation of the Puppet Master.
- Up-loadable consciousness
- Autonomy as undervalued
- Questions surrounding the ‘Uncanny‘
UNCANNY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny
Hans Bellmer – (Doll Manufacturing)
- Critique of normative models of the body, sexuality and beauty
- Freud’s ideas of the ‘Uncanny‘ – repression reemerging as something familiar
- Mike Kelly – Playing with Dead Things (on the Uncanny; Re-emergence of Figurative Sculpture in late 80s, early 80s)
- Posthumanism – Dietch (1992-3) – gradual transition towards a post-human world (i.e. Genetic Engineering and Cyberspace)
- Fears of untameable viruses both technologically and virally
Advancing but not progressing, in a swirl of side effects that have moved us closer to an unrealistic appreciation of the (technological) world
https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technology-come-to-a-halt
Robert Gober
Charles Ray
(Cubes of Chocolate)
Janine Antoni
- Reservoir of disclocated emotions
- Negative reflections; Social an technological trends that affect advancement
- All predictions have come to pass
- What will result, more progression or stifling…
- Post-human future, artist may be involved in redefining life – art as a space of representation – this controls of power as it provides a means of valid representation
Not new processes, but accelerated processes – a line to unrealistic Science- come to pass inmore expected ways then we ever could have predicted, let alone comprehended
- Built into the fabric of Modernity – as it has evolved from the 18th century (Modern Western World) and our interaction with social and technological forms
- Neil Badmington – Posthumanism
- The importance of Freud (he theories of the idea of we are not wholly autonomous of all of our actions, no longer a God perfect creations, but at the mercy of a whole set of processes that we have no control of)
- Humans as a ‘puppet’ at the mercy of a set of internal/external processes – to read Freud is to unmask the waning of humanism
- Man looses his place at the centre of the universe
- Enlightenment Philosophy (What’s important about being Human)
- Consciousness as irrational
- ‘Explosive idea’ that has little foundation in fact, but sets alight a furious set of analysis and conversation
- Consciousness as not a universal characteristic
- Darwinism, Astronomy, Freudianism – major shifts in perception (radical re-thinking)
- Focaut – Anti-Humanist Approach
- Future Begins with the End of Man – (Anti-humanism to Post-humanism)
The Family of Man (MOMA, 1995)
- Shared universality of all of human kind
- Nature as the cause of history rather than humans – (human actions) as a myth it hides other things
- Nature cannot be used to justify social, economic conditions which needs or be critique and replaced with the true historical causes of the situation over thinking of it as something that just happened
- Essentialist Humanism (nature as historical) (vs) over the Progressive Humanism
Essentialist Humanism:
- The belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence.
- Teaching traditional lines/ideas/methods regarded as essential to the prevalent culture
- View that categories of people have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or dispositions.
Progressive Humanism:
The philosophy of humanism that stresses the dignity of value of the individual, while rejecting the need to submit to the authority of some divine creator whose existence we can only postulate, not demonstrate. Believed to have develop as a counterpoint to prevalent religious thinking. Draws on humanist tradition, it strikes a balance between a humanist concern for all humanity, and an impulse to solve problems and get on with the task in hans.
- Essentialism – as both a weakness (misogyny) and a strength (givers of life etc.)
An elastic concept – (essentialism and instinct)
- Critique of humanism as an elastic, natural concept
- Our bodies are not our destinies, not defined by reproduction or sex
- Anxiety and uncertainty about humanism
- Humanism taking refuge in denial
- Shared a human concern with the end of human sovereignty
When theory meets film that signals the end of humanism – ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ (1956/1978), The Blob (1958) etc.
- Donna J. Haraway – The Hybridity of Man/Women, Women/Technology, Women/Animal – Simlans, Cyborgs and Women (1991) and When Species Meet (2008) – ‘not quite-ness’ (another undermining of humanism and what it means to be a sentient subject)
- Jean Baudrillard – dissolving boundaries between Human and Technology – The End of the Cartesian Subject
- Humans as dependent on machines, mediated by technology and networks
- No match between myth and historical materialism/facts
- European destiny had to be abandoned not mimicked
- Kapwani Kiwanga – ‘The Great Seperation’ – Narrative of Humanity
- Anthropologist of the Future
- Fanon – critique of mankinds construct as a white EU assumption
Stelarc
ORLAN
Mariko Mori
***details***
Christie Brown
(Kobain)
(Houston)
Josh Klein (Forever 48, 2013)
Oliver Laric
- Rosie Bridotti – what it means to be a subject removed for evolution etc.
- Otherness as a marginality (nature or technology)
- The Challenge of the Hybrid – destroying old structures of humanism and human nature. We need an active dissociation
- Nomadic subjectivity and an undoing of the boundaries of otherness
Lecture Slides:
